These Prisoners Are Training AI

Finnish prisons are supplying inmates to label data for Metroc, a Finnish startup whose language model helps construction companies find newly approved building projects. Metroc founder and CEO Jussi Virnala said the idea came from the difficulty of finding native Finnish speakers for clickwork in a high-wage economy. Inmates at Hämeenlinna prison, where Marmalade is serving six years, are paid €1.54 an hour for three-hour shifts. Human Rights Watch's Amos Toh criticized the arrangement as part of a broader reliance on exploitable labor, while University of Helsinki researcher Tuukka Lehtiniemi is generally positive about it.